


Kesil

by rowanthestrange_yugihell



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Allergen Information: Contains Milk, Fluff, M/M, May Not Be Suitable For Those With Lactose Intolerance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 13:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10967766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowanthestrange_yugihell/pseuds/rowanthestrange_yugihell
Summary: A story with a dragon, a tower, a magician and a curse that can only be broken by true love’s first clumsy attempts at flirtation.Cheese features heavily.





	Kesil

* * *

  


  


It has been a thousand years since the Dark Magician was trapped in the tower. 

That’s not what he’s thinking about right this moment though. Right now he’s having an argument with the constellations outside of his window, because they are insisting it’s Spring, when he knows for a fact it is Winter, and they shouldn’t be visible in his patch of sky yet.

They refuse to budge.

  


* * *

  


He can’t budge.

The white dragon makes a distressed noise, and there’s the sound of scales on archway as he wiggles.

If he tries to pull backwards, the stone catches at his scales and they Don’t Go That Way and it hurts. But if he kicks forward, he doesn’t go either, because he’s just a little… pudgy. 

His stomach growls. If he stays here long enough, that probably won’t be a problem any more. He’s so hungry.

The dragon digs his toes into the turf under his back claws, and sucks in his tummy.

No way but forward, he supposes.

  


* * *

  


Time goes no way but forward.

This is undebatable. 

But he’s a Dark Magician, and they can argue with anything. That’s why they have such big libraries, to fit all of the books from their arguing with each other’s ideas about the manifestation of the universe.

Given a lack of any other magicians however, he has taken up a more direct approach.

He brushes a large quantity of half-written scrolls from his desk, and starts writing a stern letter to the stars - the angel star in particular. Otherwise known as the Fool, which is entirely correct, because it is, and it should get back here where it’s supposed to be.

A roar comes up from the base of the tower. The mage bangs down his quill and roars wordlessly out of the window, trying to imply that his interrupter can go frighten the Springeese, they’re more likely to wet their nest than he is.

Springeese. Hmm. It’s early for them too. They’re probably being misled by the stars. Oh well, it’s a good thing for him at least, he’s running out of quills, they’re always best fresh, and this one’s bent.

For some reason. 

  


* * *

  


Reason has never been the Blue Eyes’s strong point.

He desperately tries to wiggle his wing through the tiny gap. If he can get that through, he’ll be able to-

_pop_

RRRRAAAWWWWRRRR!

Oh, that’s _much_ better. It’s like breaking from the egg again. 

He flaps his wing up and down a little to get the feeling back, and takes a few deep breaths. This has been enough excursion for today, and he flops down, head and chest and left wing in the dark of the tower base, and bottom exposed to the elements, where a Spring rain is starting to mist it.

He could sleep for a month.

  


* * *

  


He didn’t sleep for a month.

That would be the only other explanation, and who has heard of someone sleeping for a month while stuck in a tower. Alright, it is incredibly boring, and food and drink is more or less optional for him (a good thing, given the situation), but it’s just nonsensical.

Maybe - not that he’s saying the stars are correct mind you - the crocheting sent him off. He tends to make all of his own clothing, just so he knows what’s gone into it, and making anything to go under the armour - the only enjoyable part to create - is rather tedious.

The magician fishes out the small patch of material and the hook from where it’s ended up shoved under his pillow. 

Perhaps he should investigate the soporific qualities of yarn.

Shame he never worked out how to make his magic work with the innate magic of knitwear. It’s like oil and water. Water on an oil-fire really, if he’s honest. Not eager to try that again. Even the tower seemed briefly unsure if it wanted to contain that explosion.

Well, since he is working with the hypothesis that he _didn’t_ actually sleep for a month, he may as well get a good night’s rest. The magician begins the chanting of his song before bed. Some sort of spell once, he thinks, but a thousand years is a long time, and things have faded until he can’t understand the noises he’s making any more.

But still, nothing helps one fall asleep like singing.

  


* * *

  


The dragon’s blue eyes snap open and he wakes with a snarl.

If he could poke his head out, he’d blast these birds into smithereens for waking him up. They’re having a musical party on his backside, he’s certain of it. He may not be able to see the sky, but he knows this isn’t a reasonable hour.

It’s been three days since he’s eaten, and the scent from above wafts into his nose, taunting him with thoughts of breakfast. With another snarl, he pushes himself to his feet and starts forcing himself through the archway again, flattening his right wing to his back as best as he can. Then he braces his front legs against the rounded walls of the tower and heaves.

The scrape of his scales sets his teeth on edge, but with a last hard kick against the grass, he tumbles inside, cracking his nose against a stone step.

The joy of success is short-lived, as he finds he has to curl around himself like a chick to fit inside. Maybe it was less like being born from the egg, and more like going back in. Claws over his bloody nose, he suddenly finds that this feels like much less of a sensible idea now he’s not being tantalised with Nice Smells. 

The dragon blinks against the light that’s streaming in through the archway now he’s no longer wedged in it. There’s a small staircase winding tightly up the neck of the tower. He can’t even stand, let alone get purchase on anything.

Why is he so weak for tasty things? 

Why didn’t he just rip the roof off? 

Why did he even try to be polite?

He’s going to be stuck here forever.

  


* * *

  


It’s not a bad place to be stuck forever.

Being a magician, he can get most things that he needs. Nice collection of books in the library (all penned by him), about four sets of armour in the armoury (all smithed by him), it’s even got a well stocked cheese-ripening room (all cultured, curdled, drained and scalded by, indeed, him).

Which is starting to smell a bit… well ‘ripe’, now that he thinks about it. He starts to head down a few floors to the pungent room, so he can rescue the wheels. 

But he didn’t fall asleep for a month. It’s time that’s wrong, he thinks belligerently. Which he would be able to prove if he could leave.

Fine. It’s a fairly bad place to be stuck forever. 

It’s cold, it’s damp, and he’s too young to devote his life to cheese making. Young by Dark Magician standards, anyway. 

That’ll teach him to argue with a White Magician. It’s always the Dark Magicians they panic about. If the world goes a century without some other mage type deciding that the world could do without Dark Magicians, he’s fairly certain it’ll stop spinning.

He’d punch him again in a heartbeat, of course.

  


* * *

  


He’s going to do it again.

A Blue Eyes White Dragon doesn’t go backwards. Mostly because they aren’t physically built for it, but also philosophically. It’s a principle.

Plus his nose has mostly cleared, and it’s starting to smell really good.

He tries to force away the thought that he’s probably going to die here, and his cause of death will be ridiculous. Perhaps when his nest mates recover his skeleton they can say, ‘he fought against the rules of space and time, in order to reach his love’. Sounds much better than ‘here lies Ni, who was too fat to get up the stairs’.

But as he keeps going, he finds he can get a bit of a rhythm.

Kick, wiggle, wiggle, pull.

Kick, wiggle, wiggle, pull. 

Kick, wiggle, wiggle, oh.

He turns a corner and there’s a wheel of cheese. 

Then he notices it’s being held by a strong looking monster standing awkwardly, on the stairs. The mage raises its free hand in a rather stiff ‘hello’.

It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. The mage is pretty nice too.

  


* * *

  


This is the most terrified he’s ever been. Not that he shows it of course, doesn’t do to let the universe think it’s got the jump on you.

The Blue Eyes White Dragon is looking between him and the cheese, as if he can’t work out which he wants to eat first.

He raises his hand in greeting, and starts to back up the stairs. How did he get in? The tower is magic proof. And cursed. He doesn’t even know what the curse is, because funnily enough they don’t actually tell you that part, but it must be a strong one given that he’s not had a visitor in a millennia. 

His survival skills are telling him that reversing up the tower is his best move. His social skills decide they’re going to intervene, and he backs into the dining room a few floors up.

The dragon follows him and gets stuck in the doorway.

The magician averts his eyes while he tries to free himself, because apparently giving in to second-hand embarrassment takes precedent over not being eaten. Then his common sense flies out the window, because the dragon seems to be getting somewhat upset, and his brain must have decided that he’s lived long enough. He waves his staff vaguely, and the now slightly buttery smelling dragon slides in with a surprised noise.

He slides his claws together and gives them a test lick. Then he makes an intrigued noise that seems to say that this spell must come in useful. 

The magician isn’t sure he follows. He uses it for toast mostly.

They look at each other awkwardly. Well he feels awkward at least. The dragon is still idly licking his claws. He considers what those claws could do to him, and wonders if the dragon is thinking the same. 

The dragon seems to tire of looking at him like that, and pushes the dining chairs aside to make space for himself. Then he plops his head on the table, and looks up at him appealingly.

Oh good, it’s decided to eat the cheese instead.

He conjures a knife, and starts gesturing what size slice the dragon would like. He doesn’t respond. After a minute or so, he cuts off a small wedge for himself, and pushes the rest of it across the table, pulling his hand back as the great talons come towards him.

The dragon holds the cheese in two front claws, and looks at him like he has just handed him the moon. Ridiculously, he blushes. Presumably from fright, he’ll have to research. Soporific yarn and blushing as fear response.

His magnificent- terrifying jaws open wide, and he’s about to bite down, when he pauses. The dragon turns the cheese around a few times, then trills at him, and seems to be asking him where he got the milk. 

He gives the dragon a look to tell it not to ask stupid questions. The dragon blinks slowly in reply, and they both eat their cheese.

After a few minutes, the dragon leans on the table (which creaks alarmingly, but doesn’t give), and with his mouth full, makes a muffled noise and gestures around with one pointed talon as if to say, ‘If your magic works, why are you stuck here?’

He doesn’t question his assumption that the dragon knows he’s trapped - he will have felt the magical field, Blue Eyes are known for being very sensitive to magic. …Which should mean that he should be as frightened of him, as he is of the dragon. Or at least if he didn’t seem to keep on forgetting to be afraid. Maybe they’re both having atypical fear responses.

Trying to convey the idea of the field separating the fundamentally ’inside’ magic, and ‘outside’ magic takes a lot of hand waving and ad-hoc models with the knife, a salt shaker, and a plate, before the dragon is nodding along. ‘Inside magic’, the magician points at himself. ‘Outside magic’, he points at the Blue Eyes. Another nod.

The dragon then points at itself and down at the floor, perhaps meaning something like, ’Then if I’m outside magic, how come I’m in here’. It wiggles and catches the light, and gives him a wink. ‘And covered in butter’. …He’s not sure why the wink.

The magician opens his mouth to say something, and then closes it again. It’s a good question, and one that he refuses to admit that he doesn’t know the answer to.

Instead he stands up and beckons the Blue Eyes to follow him out and up the stairs. Soporific yarn, blushing as fear response, both of these are important projects, but the impossible dragon that’s inside his tower should probably take research priority. The monster in question makes a quiet whine at their upwards travel, looking back down the stairs towards the cheese room, but slides up the narrow passage obligingly.

It all seems to go much more painlessly now, though he does slip alarmingly a few times, and the Dark Magician is rather glad the dragon is beneath him, because that would probably have much more painful consequences if their positions were reversed.

  


* * *

  


The dragon pushes his way into the magician’s chamber, and questions the wisdom of this idea. It’s all a bit tight. Still, not every day you get to explore a mage’s inner sanctum.

Knocking over a bookshelf, three easels, and a teapot, he lets himself be pulled around and measured and prodded with the staff. It’s all quite exciting, considering he originally only came here for the cheese. The magician peers into his eyes, slides a hand down his nose and hums. He tells himself not to think about butter and sliding, and to focus on the discomfort of not being able to stretch his wings instead. He mustn’t break the illusion that he is a Cool, Suave, Handsome Blue Eyes White Dragon, who has never once got his foot stuck in a barrel, or landed in quicksand, or put a bush on his head to see what it would be like to have hair.

The magician takes his hand away to make notes, and he tries to turn his keen of loss into a yawn. It’s easy enough to look over his shoulder, and he sees what looks like a half-finished letter of complaint. To a star. Not a celebrity kind of star, like the Timegazer Magician, but the celestial body kind of star. It’s really quite enchanting.

Unfortunately he can’t write, and doesn’t know how else to clearly explain, ‘You offered me cheese when you were scared, covered me in butter to help me in spite of that, and you like to roar at the universe. So I would like to stay around you if that’s okay’. 

He thought his other advances were paying off when he was invited upstairs (even getting a flutter of last minute nerves), but it seems more clinical interest than anything else. He had tried asking him what he was doing in a place like this, how he became so proficient in cheese making, suggesting that he had free access to a buttered-up dragon and anything could happen, but apparently this was not enough. Maybe he needs to work on their communication. Sell himself a little. Really show he’s listening.

Deciding that a Feat Of Strength might help, he decides that making it so that the Dark Magician could study the rest of the stars could be a winning move. He scans over the beams and ceiling, trying to work out where the supportive do-not-touch bits are, and reaches up and removes a large square of the roof as neatly as possible, feeling a slight tingle through his claws as he does so. The house-dwellers call this skylight. 

Gently he deposits the rubble onto the floor, and turns to see if the magician likes it.

He’s not moving, but staring, quite expressionless, up at the hole. Worried that he’s been misunderstood, the dragon taps at the letter with a claw. The magician doesn’t look at him, but nods. Then he kicks off from the ground, floating effortlessly, and tentatively peers through the gap. He raises his staff as if he’s expecting to hit some kind of barrier. Nothing happens, and he floats out further, to sit on the edge of the roof. 

Clumsily, the dragon follows him out, trying not to slide off, or break too many tiles. He wishes he was as graceful as the magician.

  


* * *

  


Sometimes you need a hammer rather than a quill.

So much for trying to research. There’s theorising what can be done, and then there’s actually trying to do things, and somewhere along the way, that second part fell aside. He’s become rather impractical during his imprisonment, he fears. And inflexible.

The mage continues to look up at the stars. Then down to the grass. The trees.

He didn’t see this coming, and he wonders if he hasn’t been making some incorrect assumptions. The dragon settles next to him and flutters his wings a little. Assumptions about a lot of things.

His tail curls around them slightly, and the magician, endeavouring a bit of action over analysis, strokes his flank. The dragon makes a soft noise.

It’s definitely Spring.

He’s not bound by inside and outside any more, there aren’t any hard lines, and what is Spring but the time when everything re-balances itself. He could use a bit of balance.

The Dark Magician wonders how to best to tell the Blue Eyes, ‘You weren’t what I expected, you broke a thousand year curse with your kindness, and you gave me back my place in the world. So I would like to stay around you if that’s okay’. 

  



End file.
